| Creator Pamela Colman-Smith (1878-1951) |
| Profession Illustrator |
| Total Entries 26 |
| Articles Meet the Forgotten Female Artist Behind the World’s Most Popular Tarot Deck (1909) – Open Culture |
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A year after Arts and Crafts movement magazine The Craftsman published illustrator Pamela Colman-Smith’s essay excerpted above, she spent six months creating what would become the world’s most popular tarot deck. Her graphic interpretations of such cards as The Magician, The Tower, and The Hanged Man helped readers to get a handle on the story of every newly dealt spread. Colman-Smith—known to friends as “Pixie”—was commissioned by occult scholar and author Arthur E. Waite, a fellow member of the British occult society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, to illustrate a pack of tarot cards… These 56 numbered cards are divided into suits—wands, cups, swords and pentacles. Prior to Colman-Smith’s contribution, the only example of a fully illustrated Minor Arcana was to be found in the earliest surviving deck, the Sola Busca, which dates to the early 1490s. A few of her Minor Arcana cards, notably 3 of Swords and 10 of Wands, make overt reference to that deck, which she likely encountered on a research expedition to the British Museum. Mostly the images were of Colman-Smith’s own invention, informed by her sound-color synesthesia and the classical music she listened to while working. Her early experience in a touring theater company helped her to convey meaning through costume and physical attitude… ~ Meet the Forgotten Female Artist Behind the World’s Most Popular Tarot Deck (1909) – Open Culture
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